Information management is an overwhelming task faced by people in many professions. In particular, people who must evaluate data in order to make qualification decisions or to plan a course of action must make decisions based on a great deal of data. In many cases, the data must be evaluated according to certain guidelines. While guidelines are followed during the decision making process to the extent possible to avoid missing details that aid in making the decision, subjective judgements must still be made regarding the parameters of the situation due to the large amounts of data that must be processed and the great number of criteria (dictated by the guidelines) involved in many decisions. Further, not all available data is pertinent to the decision, and much time and effort is wasted by not putting aside this irrelevant data early in the decision making process.
Guidelines used in processing such data can be a valuable aid in making a qualification decision or in planning a course of action. For example, in the last decade, clinical practice guidelines have proliferated widely as professional organizations, academic and private institutions, insurers, hospitals, and governments have developed them in the hope that they will facilitate the development of more consistent, effective, and efficient medical practices. Guidelines that are based upon sound scientific evidence, and a trustworthy process for judging the value of alternative practices, can be a valuable aid to clinical decision making by health care practitioners.
Good guidelines, however, do not necessarily translate into useable tools. Guidelines have become increasingly complex, and the amount of data processed has grown to overwhelming proportions. For example, instead of using simple checklists to trigger standard medical interventions for all patients of a certain age and gender, health care practitioners must consider a wide range of health risks, the presence of which can mandate changes in the content, timing, and frequency of appropriate medical interventions. To be most effective, decision makers in all fields need practical strategies for applying guidelines in daily practice. They need new tools to facilitate data assessment, documentation of determinations, and individualized implementation of practice guidelines in an objective manner. A system that could actually create a useful tool, based on given guidelines, to aid in such determinations or implementations would therefore be highly desirable.
Systems have previously been designed which process data in order to qualify plan a course of action regarding individuals. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,622,013 to Cerchio discloses an interactive software training system. This is an early diagnostic expert system which branches to different paths during a training exercise based on inputs from the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,005,143 to Altschuler discloses a rule based computer system for selecting from a set of output actions for combinatory situations defined by a plurality of input parameters. The system employs a decision tree structure that is developed by a particular user. Random values of the input parameters are generated and the random values are biased by a function of preceding responses. The steps are repeated until a sufficient number of responses having a predetermined statistical significance are determined for each node of the decision tree. After this point, the user's response to given input parameters can be predicted based on previous user selections as manifested in the node decisions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,733,354 to Potter et al. also discloses a system for automated medical diagnosis using decision tree analysis. U.S. Pat. No. 4,730,259 to Gallant discloses a similar expert system that will follow an approximate course from input to output if a path is not defined for a particular set of inputs.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,898 to Funabashi et al. discloses a knowledge processing system employing a method by which primary events for which no determining means is provided are operated upon by knowledge represented as rules referring to the primary events for estimating or predicting the events by use of the same knowledge so as to enable the knowledge to be adapted to an inference. Events as knowledge representing an object are combined with rules as knowledge so as to establish a relation of combination. A grade representing a degree at which an event is satisfied or unsatisfied is obtained depending on a condition part represented in a form of a logical arithmetic expression including an expression of fuzzy logic.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,476 to Bodick et al. discloses a software system for editing a knowledge base which is used as a tool in a diagnostic system. The software system includes stored pictorial images that are linked to case record text files.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,785 to Adrion et al. discloses a blood analysis expert system. The system accepts data in the form of hematologic parametric numerics obtained from a patient's blood assay. The system executes instructions stored in a memory and on the basis of the parametric numerics prints out diagnostic and hematologic messages applicable to the patient.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,822 to Dormond et al. discloses a computer system which generates suggested courses of treatment for persons who have been physically injured. A user is presented with a series of questions and graphical illustrations of physical trauma, which thee system uses to elicit pointed responses from the user. These responses are used, along with the contents of a stored knowledge base, by an inference engine to determine and generate a suggested treatment for the injury.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,187 to Sorensen discloses a computer aided process for diagnosing a patient's disease or illness. A doctor observes the patient's symptoms and extracts the patient's personal, family, and medical histories. These data are entered into a computer. A program resident in the computer manipulates the data and displays determinations of which disease or illness the patient has. Once the illness is identified, suggested treatment for the illness is displayed for the doctor.
These systems are useful in processing large amounts of information in order to determine a reliable result or other output. Some of these systems provide answers based on data provided in response to questions. However, guidelines which give rise to the questions to be asked may not always so simple to administer. Thus, while these existing systems provide general answers based on guidelines, they do not allow a user to create an interactive program based on guidelines that is tailored to particular situations. A more useful system would extract relevant data in an interactive manner from comprehensive guidelines, and process this data to provide another interactive process more suited to individual circumstances. This second process or program that is created could be used to extract further data in a more relevant fashion in order to formulate a qualification decision or a course of action.